CCC 221 But St. John goes even further when he affirms that “God is love”:1 God’s very being is love. By sending his only Son and the Spirit of Love in the fullness of time, God has revealed his innermost secret:2 God himself is an eternal exchange of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he has destined us to share in that exchange.
CCC 239 By calling God “Father”, the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood,3 which emphasizes God’s immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. The language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard:4 no one is father as God is Father.
CCC 425 The transmission of the Christian faith consists primarily in proclaiming Jesus Christ in order to lead others to faith in him. From the beginning, the first disciples burned with the desire to proclaim Christ: “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”’5 It And they invite people of every era to enter into the joy of their communion with Christ:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life – the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us- that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this that our joy may be complete.6
CCC 772 It is in the Church that Christ fulfills and reveals his own mystery as the purpose of God’s plan: “to unite all things in him.”7 St. Paul calls the nuptial union of Christ and the Church “a great mystery.” Because she is united to Christ as to her bridegroom, she becomes a mystery in her turn.8 Contemplating this mystery in her, Paul exclaims: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”9
CCC 1066 In the Symbol of the faith the Church confesses the mystery of the Holy Trinity and of the plan of God’s “good pleasure” for all creation: the Father accomplishes the “mystery of his will” by giving his beloved Son and his Holy Spirit for the salvation of the world and for the glory of his name.10
Such is the mystery of Christ, revealed and fulfilled in history according to the wisely ordered plan that St. Paul calls the “plan of the mystery”11 and the patristic tradition will call the “economy of the Word incarnate” or the “economy of salvation.”
CCC 1073 The liturgy is also a participation in Christ’s own prayer addressed to the Father in the Holy Spirit. In the liturgy, all Christian prayer finds its source and goal. Through the liturgy the inner man is rooted and grounded in “the great love with which [the Father] loved us” in his beloved Son.12 It is the same “marvelous work of God” that is lived and internalized by all prayer, “at all times in the Spirit.”13
CCC 1995 The Holy Spirit is the master of the interior life. By giving birth to the “inner man,”14 justification entails the sanctification of his whole being:
Just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification. .. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life.15
CCC 2214 The divine fatherhood is the source of human fatherhood;16 this is the foundation of the honor owed to parents. The respect of children, whether minors or adults, for their father and mother17 is nourished by the natural affection born of the bond uniting them. It is required by God’s commandment.18
CCC 2367 Called to give life, spouses share in the creative power and fatherhood of God.19 “Married couples should regard it as their proper mission to transmit human life and to educate their children; they should realize that they are thereby cooperating with the love of God the Creator and are, in a certain sense, its interpreters. They will fulfill this duty with a sense of human and Christian responsibility.”20
CCC 2565 In the New Covenant, prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with his Son Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit. The grace of the Kingdom is “the union of the entire holy and royal Trinity. .. with the whole human spirit.”21 Thus, the life of prayer is the habit of being in the presence of the thrice-holy God and in communion with him. This communion of life is always possible because, through Baptism, we have already been united with Christ.22 Prayer is Christian insofar as it is communion with Christ and extends throughout the Church, which is his Body. Its dimensions are those of Christ’s love.23
CCC 2714 Contemplative prayer is also the pre-eminently intense time of prayer. In it the Father strengthens our inner being with power through his Spirit “that Christ may dwell in [our] hearts through faith” and we may be “grounded in love.”24
CCC 2778 This power of the Spirit who introduces us to the Lord’s Prayer is expressed in the liturgies of East and of West by the beautiful, characteristically Christian expression: parrhesia, straightforward simplicity, filial trust, joyous assurance, humble boldness, the certainty of being loved.25
1 l Jn 4:8, 16.
2 Cf. I Cor 2:7-16; Eph 3:9-12.
3 Cf. Isa 66:13; Ps 131:2.
4 Cf. Ps 27:10; Eph 3:14; Isa 49:15.
5 Acts 4:20.
6 1 Jn 1:1-4.
7 Eph 1:10.
8 Eph 5:32; 3:9-11; 5:25-27.
9 Col 1:27.
10 Eph 1:9.
11 Eph 3:9; cf. 3:4.
12 Eph 2:4; 3:16-17.
13 Eph 6:18.
14 Cf. Rom 7:22; Eph 3:16.
15 Rom 6:19, 22.
16 Cf. Eph 314.
17 Cf. Prov 1:8; Tob 4:3-4.
18 Cf. Ex 20:12.
19 Cf. Eph 3:14; Mt 23:9.
20 GS 50 # 2.
21 St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio, 16, 9: PG 35, 945.
22 Cf. Rom 6:5.
23 Cf. Eph 3:18-21.
24 Eph 3:16-17.
25 Cf. Eph 3:12; Heb 3:6; 4:16; 10:19; 1 Jn 2:28; 3:21; 5:14.